Storms Could Delay Shuttle Again

Published 6:00 pm, Friday, November 22, 2002

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) _ NASA refilled space shuttle Endeavour's fuel tank Saturday for a nighttime liftoff, but storms in Spain loomed as a possible showstopper for the second day in a row.

Launch managers were hoping for a lucky break in the weather at one of the emergency landing sites 4,000 miles away. Endeavour cannot take off without somewhere to land across the Atlantic in the rare event of engine failure or some other catastrophe during the ride uphill.

The delays are starting to pile up for NASA's latest delivery trip to the international space station, in need of a fresh crew, spare parts for a balky air-cleanser and another new girder.

Endeavour should have flown in October, but was grounded until November because of cracked fuel lines found throughout the shuttle fleet. Then during a Nov. 11 launch attempt, oxygen leaked from a cracked hose in the astronauts' supply line. While trying to fix that, workers damaged the shuttle's robot arm; fortunately, no repairs were needed.

And then the weather interfered.

Both Spanish air bases were socked in Friday night by the same storm system that sank an oil tanker earlier in the week. The system that sank an oil tanker earlier in the week. The bad weather was expected to last throughout the weekend.

At Cape Canaveral, conditions were ideal once again for launching.

Endeavour is loaded with a $390 million space station girder almost identical to one launched last month. Two crew members will hook it up during three spacewalks.

The shuttle also contains valves for the U.S. carbon-dioxide removal unit aboard the station and extra air-scrubbing canisters. Both the American and Russian air purifiers have malfunctioned in recent weeks.

Endeavour is the ride home for American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev, who have been living on the space station since June. Saturday was their 171st day in orbit.

They will be replaced by Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin, who will stay for at least four months.

Whitson said she has mixed feelings about leaving. The 42-year-old biochemist has spent her whole adult life aiming to become an astronaut. Her goal was a long spaceflight.

Even though she's enjoyed working on the space station, Whitson has expressed a growing weariness for the canned food and just-add-water meals. She stockpiled rehydrated shrimp cocktails before she left Earth on June 5, but her taste changed in space and she passed off the shrimp to her crewmates.